Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 473

When I was sending the defender Romanus to the royal city, he long sought your writings, but they could by no means be found; afterward, however, they were found among the letters of many others, in which your sweetness makes known to me the afflictions and tribulations of your spirit, and reveals the adversities of evil men. But, I beg, in all these things call back to mind that which I also believe you never forget: All who wish to live piously in Christ suffer persecution (2 Tim. 3:12). Wherefore I say confidently that you live less piously if you endure less persecution. Let us also hear what else the doctor of the Gentiles says to his disciples:

You yourselves know, brethren, our coming in unto you, that it was not vain, but having before suffered and been shamefully treated (1 Thess. 2:1-2). Behold, most sweet son, the holy preacher declared that his coming in would have been empty had he not endured insults; and your charity wishes to speak good things, but refuses to suffer evil. Wherefore it is necessary that amid adversities you gird yourself more tightly, so that adversity itself may increase all the more your desire toward the love of God and your zeal for good works. So the seeds of the harvest, covered by frost, germinate more fruitfully; so the fire is pressed by the blast that it may grow. I know indeed that from the perverse speeches of so many evil tongues you suffer a mighty tempest, and in your mind you endure the waves of contradictions.

But let it return to your mind what the Lord says through the Psalmist: I heard you in the hiding-place of the tempest, I proved you at the waters of contradiction (Ps. 80:8). For if amid those who contradict you do the things that are of God, then you are proved a true laborer. But your most sweet charity wrote to me, that I should write some word of admonition to the monasteries which through your prayers and teaching were established by our son the lord Paulus. But if they are vessels of God, I know that through the grace of compunction they have the fountain of wisdom within, and they ought not to receive the tiny drops of my dryness. Your perfect wisdom recalls indeed that in paradise there was no rain, but a fountain rose up from the midst of paradise, to water the face of the earth (Gen. 2:6).

Those souls, therefore, which through the grace of compunction have the fountain within themselves, do not need the necessary rain from another's tongue. Through your writings you announced to me the passing of the lady Esychia; and I rejoiced with great exultation, because that good soul happily reached her homeland, she who had labored in a foreign land. Greet in my stead my glorious daughters, the lady Dominica and the lady Eudochia. But since I have long heard that the aforesaid lady Dominica has been made a prioress, in this let your charity keep watch over her: that, since she is now no longer compelled to serve in the toil of the earthly palace, she may perfectly flee all the din of this world, give herself wholly to God, and leave nothing of herself outside herself;

but also that she may gather as many souls as she can into the service of their Creator, so that their minds may receive through His word the grace of compunction, and so that she herself may be the more swiftly absolved from all her sins, the more that through her life and speech the souls of others also break forth from the bonds of their sins. And because no one among men in this world is without sin—and what else is it to sin but to flee from God?—I say confidently that this same daughter of mine also has some sins. Therefore, that she may perfectly satisfy her mistress, that is, eternal Wisdom, let her who alone had fled return with many. For the guilt of her turning away shall not be imputed to her, who returning brings back gain.

But the lord Alexander and the lord Theodorus I ask to be greeted in my stead through you. As for your writing that I ought to write to my most excellent daughter the lady Gurdia, and to her most holy daughter the lady Theoctista, and to their magnificent men the lord Marinus and the lord Christodorus, and to admonish them something concerning their souls—your most sweet Magnitude knows well that today in the city of Constantinople there are none who can translate well from Latin into Greek what is dictated. For while they guard the words and heed the sense not at all, they neither make the words to be understood, and they break the sense. For which reason I have written briefly to my aforesaid daughter the lady Gurdia, for to the rest I have kept silent.

Moreover I have sent to you two shirts and four stoles, which I ask you humbly to offer to the aforesaid men from the blessing of Saint Peter. Besides, a certain man who was dying left me a little boy: thinking of his soul, I have sent him to your sweetness, so that he may live on this earth in the service of the one through whom he may be able to attain the liberty of heaven. And my most beloved son the deacon Anatolius, whom I have sent to the royal city to conduct the responses of the Church, I ask that your most sweet charity may frequently visit, so that after the labors which he suffers in secular affairs, he may find rest with you in the word of God, and as if with a certain white linen wipe away the sweat of that same earthly labor.

Commend him to all the persons who are known to you, although I know that if he is perfectly known, he needs no commendation. But you, show in his regard how much you love Saint Peter the apostle, how much you love me. And may Almighty God guard my most sweet charity—that is, you—from enemies both inward and outward; and when it shall please Him, lead you to the heavenly kingdoms. (See book I, letter 6.)